Tim stuck his head in the kitchen door. Just four magic words, “the ESB are here.” Oh, what news! The two yellow vans had been spotted at the end of the drive.

This was Sunday and the website said the electricity wouldn’t be repaired until the Wednesday. That would have been long and torturous.

We had lost power on Saturday morning after the storm. I was standing inside the living room window. A fork of lightning flashed in the sky followed by a loud clap of thunder. That was enough, the power was gone. There followed a few smaller rumbles and a heavy shower of hailstones.

The lads in the farmyard didn’t even notice there had been lightning. The small thunderstorm had been powerful and fast. I was about to make tea. All the little daily things we take for granted stopped. We were without power for just 24 hours. We have a generator which is now important for any busy farm, and especially a dairy farm. Still, even that short spell of time was hardship.

The house cooled down and power and water was restricted as Tim moved the generator from the farmyard to the house and back again.

The three men that emerged from the yellow vans were from the Bandon office of the ESB. They had fixed a fault in Vicarstown and then come down to Tower to grab a snack. While there, they had a look at the website to see if there was any other outage nearby and they saw our one logged.

Up they came and had us going in less than an hour. The fault was a fuse that had been hit by the lightning. They said that the thunder storms were actually causing more problems in our area than storm Éowyn.

We were so grateful to these three men from the ESB. Really, the ESB and other providers have done trojan work in the last week, working long hours to restore power and water and clear roads of fallen trees in difficult conditions.

Yet, they were upbeat and good humoured while they chatted with Tim and Colm. They did add that they were surprised at how many dairy farmers were without generators.

If these storm events are to continue, then perhaps it is something that needs to be budgeted for. Being ready for a storm goes a long way to making the difficulties of power outage bearable.

Struggling families

It is really tough on parents trying to manage small children with no electricity and water. Carers looking after the elderly and people with additional needs, whether in their own homes or living with family members had a really difficult time.

I have huge sympathy for people who were without services for days, some for over a week. This was definitely an unprecedented situation and hopefully, Ireland will not have a storm as catastrophic for a very long time.

Listening to people in the west of Ireland and across the midlands and north, it is understandable that they felt abandoned as the days went by and they were still without water and electricity. Communities came together, neighbours helped neighbours.

The sheer size of the number of people impacted by this weather event meant that those in remote areas had to just wait it out. That is tough.

Finding a speedier restoration solution is challenging. Building more resilience into the power supply is a priority for the ESB. This will include felling trees that could pull down power lines.

Over time this will lessen the impact of wind damage and hopefully lessen the numbers of people suffering power outages after a storm.